NOTD: Ludurana Show (or, Thank God for Brazilians!)

Hello!

At the end of Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts says 'Thank God for Brazilians'. She was referring to the man she had fallen in love with, but I think she just as easily could have been referring to Brazilian nail polishes, which, in my opinion, are some of the most spine-tinglingly beautiful polishes in existence.

I don't know how they do it. There must be some magic ingredient that can only be harvested there, perhaps some magic essence left over from all of the beautiful women celebrating during Carnival. Whatever it is, I approve.

To support my claims, I give you Ludurana's Show, from their Aurora Boreal collection:

To say that Show is a dark violet/dark teal duochrome is correct, but not fully accurate. Sometimes you see a more true blue, sometimes a pinker fuschia. Unlike some duochromes where you mostly see only one color at a time, it's very difficult to see fewer than two colors at once with this polish, and usually you see more than that. This is a beauty in all lights and at all angles. And the colors are even deeper and more saturated than they appear here.

In all of these pictures, on my ring finger I have one coat of Show over one coat of China Glaze's Concrete Catwalk (a dark gray), and on the rest I have two coats of Show alone. You definitely don't have to layer this over a dark color for the beauty to show through, but it does look a bit more intense if you do. I will probably wear it over black or dark gray on all my nails in the future, if only because I only need to use one coat of it that way--more manicures for me from my precious bottle!!!!

This shows the many colors you see at once. :)

Here you can see the difference between the polish with and without an undercoat

I think it's safe to say this is my new favorite polish (admittedly, my 'favorite polish' list is growing...but this is exceptional even among that group). About 90% of me is really bummed that most of the rest of this collection is currently out of stock at Ninja, and the other 10% is...my bank account, lol. :)

So what do you do to a polish that is already stunning? How do you improve on a near-perfect multichrome? What else?! You Spectraflair it!!

After a few days of wearing it on its own, I put some of my Spectraflair topcoat over it. Here is the result:

Spectraflair all the duochromes!

Turns out, this did not go too well. The SF did give it a holo effect, as you can see, but it also diminished the intensity of the colors and the multichrome effect. It's still lovely, just different. And with the new color and style, I decided I wanted a little stamping on it, too...I used plate Drk-A to stamp on it with Pure Ice Lively Lilac on my ring finger, and Sally Hansen Insta-Dry in Grape Going! on my other fingers:

Duochrome-holo-stamped version

A little holo for ya!

The Grape Going is very close to the new color of the polish, so it shows, but very subtly, and more depending on the light (as you can see above). The New Lilac shows much more dramatically, giving the look a nice contrast. The whole look ended up with a surreal mermaid-like feel to it. :)

Thanks for looking!

M.